The first documented expedition was that of the brothers Vadino and Ugolino Vivaldi. Their goal was to reach India after circumnavigating Africa. Led by Majorcan navigators, their trail is well documented in successive stops in the Mediterranean Sea until they entered the Atlantic Ocean. Here their trail was lost. No one knows whether their expedition also visited the archipelago or not.
The exact date of the voyage that first reached the eastern Canary Islands is unknown, but it is assumed that it must have taken place in the early 14th century. The presence of the Italian navigator Lancelotto Malocello on the island of Lanzarote, to which he gave his name, is confirmed by various documentary sources.
The first expeditions
Reports of the Norman raids on Lanzarote and Fuerteventura in the 14th century mention the existence of a castle probably built by this Ligurian navigator. Similarly, in the 1339 portolan map (Italian nautical navigational chart) by the Majorcan Angelo Dulcert, Lanzarote is depicted with the arms and symbols of the Republic of Genoa. This designation expressed the dominance of the Republic of Genoa on the island. In the map, Lanzarote is named “Insula de Lanzarotus Marocelus”.
The only written document that sheds some light on the chronology of the Genoese expedition and its stay on the islands is a 16th-century account by the French historian Paulmyer. He dates the expedition’s arrival on the island to 1312 and its stay on Lanzarote to twenty years, until the Genoese were driven from the island by a local uprising.
None of the Canary Islands are recorded on either the portolan map by Sanuto (1320) or the map by Dalorto (1325). Only the islands of Lanzarote, the “Vesci marini” (Lobos) and Fuerteventura are represented on Dulcert’s nautical chart. However, the island of Fuerteventura is devoid of Genoan symbols, which only indicates knowledge of the island, but not its territorial domination.
Portuguese expeditions
The participation of the Majorcans in the Genoese expansion and the spread of the Dulcert portolan gave rise to subsequent Portuguese and Balearic attempts to control the archipelago.
The next voyage to the islands was the work of the Portuguese in 1341. Under the patronage of the Portuguese king Alfonso IV. a crew consisting of Genoese, Florentines, Castilians and Portuguese set sail. The captains were the Florentine Angiolino del Teggia and the Genoese Nicolossa da Recca. Recca was also the author of the report from this trip. It became the oldest surviving description of the archipelago and its inhabitants. The report confirms the landing on Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria, the passage around Tenerife and a visit to El Hierro and La Palma is not quite clearly recorded.
From that moment on, the archipelago ceased to be part of mythical geography and became an area visited and sought after by adventurers and merchants.
At the same time as the Portuguese expedition, navigators and merchants from the Crown of Aragon, especially from Mallorca and Catalonia, also entered the “Atlantic scene”. They were ultimately the main organizers of voyages to the Canary Islands in the second half of the 14th century. Their voyages were not limited to purely commercial purposes, but also included political and evangelistic purposes to a large extent. Their main goal was to establish a relatively safe base for operations in Africa.
Evangelization
The news of the Portuguese voyage in 1341, of the recent Majorcan expeditions, but also of the older voyages of Malocello, also aroused the interest of the papacy based in Avignon.
In 1344, Pope Clement VI. appointed Luis de la Cerda, an expatriate royal prince of the Crown of Castile who lived and served in the Kingdom of France, as ruler of the Canary Islands. He was given the title “Prince of Fortune” and full authority to eliminate paganism from the so-called Aqualian zone. However, Luis de la Cerda died in 1348 without being able to complete his project of feudalizing the Canary Islands. This left the field open for a full Aragonese intervention in the archipelago.
The failure of Cerda’s project and the strengthening of the Majorcan and Catalan presence in the Canary Islands forced the Holy See to delegate the evangelizing function to the Aragonese themselves. In 1351, the so-called Bishopric of Fortune was created. Several papal bulls were granted for this bishopric, which, among other things, authorized the new bishopric to collect donations for the church, to establish it as a cathedral, and to designate the place with the title of city. All this was intended to demonstrate the colonization of the annexed territory of the Canary Islands.
In 1352, the expedition of Arnald Roger with thirty missionaries and twelve Christianized natives, captured during previous expeditions, landed on the east coast of Gran Canaria in the area of today’s Melenara beach. The crew laid the foundations of a new bishopric in the aboriginal center of Telde, from which it also took the name of the territory.
The bishopric of Telde functioned for 40 years. This allowed for the intensification of contacts and expeditions to the islands until its demise. In 1391, the monks were murdered by the indigenous population and the missionary bishopric was destroyed.
Catalan expeditions
At the end of the 14th century, the Mediterranean region was hit by an economic, financial and demographic crisis. As a result, the Catalans and Majorcans began to leave the Atlantic zone.
In 1377, the first arrival of Basque sailors to the islands is documented. It was more of a coincidence that the expedition led by Martín Ruiz de Avendaño was driven ashore by a storm on the coast of Lanzarote. This fortuitous event marked the arrival of a new naval power in the Canary Islands, Castile. Castile, after the conquest of the strategic Mediterranean enclaves of the Strait of Tarifa, Gibraltar and Algeciras, was experiencing a phase of economic expansion. This led to the undertaking of many expeditions using the ports of Seville and Cádiz as bases. Unfortunately, documentation related to the first Castilian voyages has not been preserved.
Only one from 1385 appears in written sources. The first significant record of Castilian expeditions dates back to 1393. This was due to the loot obtained. The fleet, led by Captain Alvaro Becerra, traveled around the archipelago, occupying territories mainly on the island of Lanzarote. This was also mentioned in his chronicle by the Castilian king Enrique III, grandfather of Isabella I of Castile.
From that time until 1402, voyages from Andalusian ports to occupy the Canary Islands were very frequent. This can also be judged from the records of the treasury of the municipal government in Seville. In 1402, the Castilians were the first to occupy the island of Lanzarote. But that is another story. More about it some other time.
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